Mozilla has released a video that promotes the idea that Firefox OS is "the platform HTML5 deserves". Sounds like a strong comment on the future, but is Mozilla really creating a platform for standardized web apps or something new?

It is easy to make fun of a language when you don't really understand it and are simply comparing it to what you already know. JavaScript suffers a lot from the WAT! style of humor. So does it deserve it?

As a programmer I have always seen the cloud, and more accurately cloud deployment, as a friend. It's one way to get an app as a service into the user's hands. Just recently, however, I have had the tables reversed. With me as the user, I suddenly find a cloud delivered app not quite as attractive as I thought.

There has been a long tendency in the development of programming to try to turn it into something else - mathematics, logic, engineering - anything as long as we can get away from programming. Why, when what makes software different from all of the above is clearly its strength and not its weakness?